7 Where it stands, how to follow it, and what the record cannot say

7.1 Why "where does it stand" is a harder question than it sounds

The first thing anybody wants to know about a piece of 3GPP work is whether it is done. The honest answer has to be built out of what 3GPP writes down about itself, and that turns out to be narrower than the question.

There is no status word anywhere in this record. No row says running, stopped or finished. What a work plan row carries is a planned day and a completion value between 0 and 1, and every sentence below is built from those two.

116 of this subject's 155 short names carry a completion value of 1 ^{[2] [3]}. That is what the plan writes when the plan for that row is complete. It is not a claim that the work is over, and it says nothing about any other row.

7.2 Release 17's radio work reads as complete

The first rule-writing item for the 5G radio over satellite, its core part and its performance part all stand at 1 NR_NTN_solutions.

The core part was planned to 2022-06-06, the performance part to 2023-03-03, and the feature row itself to 2024-12-12 NR_NTN_solutions-Core NR_NTN_solutions-Perf.

Its conformance part — the tests a device has to pass — was planned to 2025-12-12 NR_NTN_solutions_plus_CT-UEConTest, later than any of the three above it. The next section is the same shape, one release on, with the tests further behind still.

7.3 Release 19 is mostly there and its tests are not

The Release 19 radio phase splits the same way. Its core part and its performance part both stand at 1 NR_NTN_Ph3-Core NR_NTN_Ph3-Perf.

Its conformance part stands at 0.14, with a planned finish in 2027 NR_NTN_Ph3-UEConTest. Read those three rows together and they say one thing — the rules are written and the test suite is not.

7.4 Release 20 is early everywhere

Work	Completion value
5GSAT_Ph4-ARC, the phase 4 architecture rules 5GSAT_Ph4-ARC	0.8
IoT_NTN_Ph4, the internet-of-things phase IoT_NTN_Ph4	0.59
FS_5GSAT_Ph4_CH, the phase 4 charging study FS_5GSAT_Ph4_CH	0.4
NTN_bands_Features_R20, power classes and a 3 MHz channel NTN_bands_Features_R20	0.34
NR_NTN_GNSS_resilient, working without a satellite fix NR_NTN_GNSS_resilient	0

The last of those was opened at the RAN plenary in June 2026, by the document RP-261568 RP-261568 RP-112. A row at 0 with a description behind it is work the plan has opened and recorded no progress against.

The version numbers say much the same from the other side. TR 23.700-19, the phase 4 architecture study, exists at 20.0.0 TR 23.700-19, while the phase 4 charging report TR 28.894 stands at 0.3.0 TR 28.894.

The first of those is the one to open if you only open one, because its scope names the thing the whole of phase 4 is arranged around.

A phone call, over a geostationary satellite, on the narrowband radio built for sensors, into the older 4G core. What that took in the system groups is The system half: 5GSAT, phase by phase.

7.5 One row says STOPPED, and it is not a status

The performance part of the combined L-band item is called "STOPPED - Perf. part: …" in the work plan NR_NTN_combinedLband-Perf.

That word is inside the title somebody typed, not in a field. No other row can be read that way, and nothing in the plan turns it into a state — which is exactly why it is worth knowing about.

7.6 What to open, and in what order

The shortest statement of what a group promised is the document the work plan points at. Four are worth opening before anything else.

• RP-261568 RP-261568 — the Release 20 radio study on working without a satellite navigation fix

• SP-260423 SP-260423 — the phase 4 architecture work

• CP-261281 CP-261281 — its protocol half, in CT

• RP-253813 RP-253813 — the internet-of-things phase 4

After those, read by subject rather than by date. For the radio, TR 38.811 first and TR 38.821 second — the two studies the whole line rests on — then TS 38.108 for what a satellite base station has to be TR 38.811 TR 38.821 TS 38.108.

For the architecture, TR 23.737 and then the phase reports in order: TR 23.700-28, TR 23.700-29, TR 23.700-19 TR 23.737 TR 23.700-28 TR 23.700-29 TR 23.700-19.

For what the system must do, TS 22.261, with TR 22.887 for what phase 4 is still arguing about TS 22.261 TR 22.887.

For the internet-of-things side, TR 36.763 and then TS 36.108 TR 36.763 TS 36.108. For security, TR 33.700-29 and TR 33.700-30 TR 33.700-29 TR 33.700-30.

One warning about that list: this school holds no parsed text for fourteen of the specifications in its own register, and TR 38.811 and TR 38.821 are two of them. They can be named and counted here and never quoted.

7.7 What this record cannot say

The honest half of the course. None of the following is in the data, so nothing here should be read as an answer to it.

• No date on which anything froze, ended or was published. The register holds meeting codes, version numbers, planned days and the day a file went up on a server. "Release 20 completes in …" cannot be written from it.

• No person. The work plan rows and the work item descriptions do carry rapporteur names, and none of them was copied in.

• No vote of any kind. No column of any store here records a tally, so nothing in this subject was ever carried by a majority.

• No reason for any decision. A document's outcome word is recorded and never why the room settled on it.

• No technical content of any study. Titles, scopes, objectives, counts and the defined words. No key issue, no solution, no evaluation result, no requirement — so never write what a study concluded.

• No comparison with any other area of 3GPP work. Nothing here counted sensing, positioning or ambient internet-of-things work.

Two more sit under every number in this course, and both are about the counting rather than about satellites.

Everything here was filtered by work item short name, never by the word. That is deliberate — 5663 documents say satellite or GNSS, belong to some other piece of work, and say neither non-terrestrial nor NTN, satellite navigation above all ^[4].

The cost of that filter is that every count here is a floor. 6568 documents name satellites or NTN in their title and carry no work item short name at all ^[5], so they are in none of these numbers — every plenary approval paper among them, and everything filed before a work item existed.

7.8 Where this leaves you

You now have the shape of both halves — The system half: 5GSAT, phase by phase for the core network and the protocols, What is on the shelf, and why the bands weigh so much for the documents and the bands — and a way of reading state that does not overclaim.

What this school does not carry is the text of any of these documents. What it carries is the map: which document answers which question, which short name finds the paperwork, and which numbers are floors rather than totals. This course's sources page lists every entry behind every claim in it.